In high traffic locations such as traffic lights, train stations, and corridors where people and devices are moving relatively fast in and out of wireless or Wi-Fi access point coverage for a network, devices may automatically connect to an access point upon entering its coverage area. Current standards allow devices to associate with an access point when in range of its coverage area and authenticate each time a device moves to a coverage area of a new access point. In many instances, devices are in range of an access point for only short time interval, too short to initiate data exchange. From the user's perspective, devices will continue to attempt authentication despite not being subscribed to the network and applications may be running on the device with ‘keep alive’ messages needing access to the network. As a result, an unnecessary drainage of the device battery occurs. From the network side, unwanted associations and authentications initiated by transient devices increase overhead, exhaust system resources, and affect legitimate associations competing for network bandwidth.